This page lists selected newly published SFFH books seen by Locus Online (independently from the listings compiled by Locus Magazine).

Review copies received will be listed (though reprints and reissues are on other pages), but not galleys or advance reading copies. Selections, some based only on bookstore sightings, are at the discretion of Locus Online.

* = first edition
+ = first US edition
Date with publisher info is official publication month;
Date in parentheses at paragraph end is date seen or received.

Vampire detective novel, fourth in the series following The Nymphos of Rocky Flats, X-Rated Bloodsuckers, and The Undead Kama Sutra (2008), about an ex-soldier who became a vampire while serving in Iraq. In this volume PI Felix Gomez deals with a nest of zombies outside Denver.
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HarperCollins has this page for the book, with its Browse Inside function.
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The author's website includes an excerpt, and a YouTube link to "the Greatest Book Trailer of All Time".
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Amazon has the Publishers Weekly review: "Fans of splattery Hollywood-style horror will have fun with this tale of violence and mayhem."

Fantasy novel, the author's first novel, first published last year in the UK as The Painted Man. It concerns a human society besieged by demons.
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The publisher's site has this description. The author's website has excerpts on its news page, plus artwork, background on the author, and deleted scenes from the book.
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Amazon has the Publishers Weekly review: "Brett's debut builds slowly and grimly on a classic high fantasy framework of black-and-white morality and bloodshed... With its nameless enemies that exist only to kill, Brett's gritty tale will appeal to those who tire of sympathetic villains and long for old-school orc massacres."
Carolyn Cushman reviewed the book in the October '08 issue of Locus Magazine, and the titled was included on the 2008 Recommended Reading List. Faren Miller's review ran in March '09.

Fantasy novel set in an alternate 19th-century Europe, about an heir to the line of blood sorceresses.
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Tor's site has this description. The author's site includes this excerpt.
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Amazon has the Publishers Weekly review, and several 4-star reader reviews.

Urban fantasy novel, third in the series about Druid detective Connor Gray following Unshapely Things (2007) and Unquiet Dreams (2008), about a battle between Celtic fairies and Teutonic elves that threatens the city of Boston.
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The author's website has a description with a link to a PDF excerpt.
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Carolyn Cushman reviewed the book in the March issue of Locus Magazine: "Connor follows his usual patterns where he can, though, coping with his damaged powers, being a bit of a wise-ass with the magical Guild while helping out the mortal police, and in a crisis summoning up unexpectedly powerful magics to save the day. It's a formula, but it works, with lots of snarky characters to keep things fun."

Fantasy novella, sequel to The Voyage of the Proteus (2008), in which a character named Tom Disch arrives in post-apocalyptic New York with Socrates, his shipmate from the Proteus.
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The publisher's site has this order page with a description. It's limited to 500 copies, and the earlier book is now sold out.
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Amazon has the Publishers Weekly review, which calls it "less a conventional novella than an extended metaphor" but concludes "As genre fiction it disappoints, but Disch's command of language is a delight, by turns casual, brutal and elegant."
Gary K. Wolfe reviewed it in the November '08 issue of Locus Magazine; the book "is filled with disturbing reminders of Disch's own tribulations, including the fire which damaged his apartment (and which he unsubtly blames on his downstairs neighbor, the actress Elizabeth Ashley), the death of his partner Charlie, and his threatened eviction (which Tom Disch the narrator describes as 'my death warrant'). It's a sad and grim book, and it's fun to read."

Satiric SF novel set in 2041, when government agents called Good Humor Men confiscate fattening food as illegal contraband, even as a mysterious plague threatens to starve humanity.
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The publisher's site has this description with blurbs from Kage Baker and Lucius Shepard, who says the book "is hilarious, trenchant, important, and the story of Dr. Louis Schmalzberg's search for the jar of liposuctioned Elvis fat that may save America is impossible to put down. Andrew Fox writes like a combination of Kurt Vonnegut, Dave Barry and Molly Ivins..."
It's listed as an April publication, but is available now from Amazon.

SF novel, the author's second novel following Singularity's Ring (2008), and an expansion of his Hugo, Nebula, and Sturgeon award finalist novella from the Apr/May 2006 issue of Asimov's SF magazine.
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It's about an Ohio high school student and his double from a parallel universe, who has scheme to get rich by importing inventions from one universe to the other.
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Tor's site has this description.
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Amazon has its "look inside" feature with an excerpt, and the starred Publishers Weekly review: "With imagination and sympathy, Melko makes the journey genuinely exciting and leaves plenty of room for future exploits."
Paul Witcover and Gary K. Wolfe reviewed it in the January issue of Locus Magazine. Wolfe described it as a good example of "entry-level" SF: "as compelling as it is unchallenging, and exactly the sort of thing you can hand to a non-SF reader with confidence. For SF readers, it's an enjoyable walk through a familiar playbook."

Young adult SF novel, part of the author's loose series "Small Towns, Big Ideas", about a South Dakota schoolboy who digs up a flying saucer.
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The author's site has this page for the book, with a description and links to reviews.

Anthology of 19 original young-adult SF and fantasy stories, following earlier anthologies Firebirds (2003) and Firebirds Rising (2006).
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Authors include Nancy Springer, Christopher Barzak, Ellen Klages, Margo Lanagan, Jo Walton, Jane Yolen & Adam Stemple, Laurel Winter, and Elizabeth E. Wein. There are illustrations by Mike Dringenberg.
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The publisher has this brief description.
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Amazon has its "look inside" feature, with the table of contents and an excerpt, and the Booklist review by Krista Hutley: "Despite the variety, similar themes echo throughout the stories and, along with Dringenberg's smoky, evocative graphite illustrations, make the collection cohesive while still encompassing the depth and breadth of speculative fiction."

Urban fantasy novel, fourth in the Marla Mason series following Blood Engines (2007), Poison Sleep (2008), and Dead Reign (2008), about the guardian witch of the East Coast city of Felport. In this book Marla deals with her con artist brother, Jason.
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Bantam's site has this description and an excerpt.
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Amazon has the Publishers Weekly review: "Pratt's imagination shows no signs of flagging, and plenty of fresh twists and turns propel the series vigorously toward the next book."
Faren Miller reviews the book in the March issue of Locus Magazine, saying it "turns out to be considerably more intimate than what it initially seems..."

Far future SF novella, first published in 2007 in anthology The New Space Opera, concerning a troupe of players who travel among human worlds to stage the works of Shakespeare, and mysterious aliens who take interest in their performances.
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It placed fifth in that year's Locus Poll for best novella.
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Subterranean's site has this order page with a description and quotes from reviews. The first printing is sold out; the copy listed here, belated received from an earlier Amazon order, is the second printing.
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Amazon has Publishers Weekly's starred review from last October: "Hugo winner Simmons combines his fine prose with a well-developed sense of wonder and love for reworked literary and mythological materials... This finely crafted novella is a perfect example of Simmons's many strengths."

Space opera romance novel, sequel to Gabriel's Ghost (2005) and Shades of Dark (2008), about a patrol ship captain and her renegade lover.
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Bantam's site has this description, and an excerpt.
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Amazon has several enthusiastic reader reviews, including one from long-time SF fan John J. Pierce: "full of energy; energy that comes from the synergy of sf and romance. You can trust me; I've been an sf fan more more than 40 years, and I'm telling you you can trust Linnea Sinclair."
Carolyn Cushman reviews it in the March issue of Locus Magazine: "This is what I imagine a David Weber romance might be like -- a rousing military space adventure with sex thrown in, and protagonists who are way more interested in each other's weapons than their clothes."

SF novel, first book in the Apotheosis series, set 200 years after the collapse of the Confederacy, when the Roman Catholic Church and the Eridani Caliphate race to investigate a long-lost human colony at Xi Virginis.
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The author's site has this page for the book, a page for related earlier series The Hostile Takeover Trilogy, and a link to a YouTube video trailer.
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SF Signal's John DeNardo posted this 4-star review: "BOTTOM LINE: A splendidly constructed space opera."

Urban fantasy novel, fourth in the 'Cal Leandros' series following Nightlife (2006), Moonshine (2007), and Madhousse (2008), set in a New York City inhabited by various preternatural beings.
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The author's website has a description.
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Amazon has numerous enthusiastic reader reviews.

*
Williams, Walter Jon :
This Is Not a Game
(Orbit US 978-0-316-00315-5, $24.99, 369pp, hardcover, March 2009)

Near-future thriller about a game designer who flees riots in Jakarta to return to murder and corporate espionage in Los Angeles.
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Orbit's website has this post about the book; parent publisher Hachette has this description with a link to a BookBrowse Reader excerpt.
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Amazon's "look inside" feature includes an excerpt. The starred Publishers Weekly review, from its January 19th issue, concludes "Though the technology talk occasionally becomes intrusive, it's convincingly written; the characters are realistic and absorbing, and the story deeply compelling."
Gary K. Wolfe reviews it in the March issue of Locus Magazine: "Williams, from his own experience, knows how these games work and how the participants interact, and the result is that This Is Not A Game succeeds not only as a suspense novel, but as an incisive portrait of a subculture for whom reality is increasingly contingent, and increasingly mediated."

Collection of 31 stories, subtitled "A Definitive Retrospective of His Finest Short Fiction", chosen by the author.
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Contents include "The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories", "The Fifth Head of Cerberus", "The Death of Dr. Island", "La Befana", "Forlesen", "The Eyeflash Miracles", "Seven American Nights", "Death of the Island Doctor", and "A Cabin on the Coast".
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Wolfe provides an afterword to each story.
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Amazon's "look inside" function includes the table of contents and an excerpt of the first story.
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Publishers Weekly's starred review, from its January 25th issue, says Wolfe "mixes pulp adventure, ghost stories and noir with self-reference, meta-fiction, unreliable narrators and puns. ... The result is a highly flattering career retrospective of a postmodern fabulist disguised as a mild-mannered SF writer."

Winter comes to water as well as land, though there are no leaves to fall. The waves that were a bright, hard blue yesterday under a fading sky are green, opaque, and cold. If you are a boy not wanted in the house you walk the beach for hours, feeling the winter that has come in the night; sand blowing across your shoes, spray wetting the legs of your corduroys.

Plush dolls of Pinky and the Brain overhung Charlie's monitor, their bottoms fixed in place with Velcro tabs, toes dangling over the video screen. Pinky's face was set in an expression of befuddled surprise, and the Brain looked out at the world with red-rimmed, calculating eyes.